Julia nodded. This time, the tears came freely. She couldn’t even wipe them away, she felt so overwhelmed. Evelyn cried, too.
“There were six police officers at the station, Jules. Six! They are doing everything they can.”
Julia blinked. “Six?”
“Yeah. Can you believe it?”
“Why?” Julia whispered.
Evelyn looked confused. “What, sweetie?”
“Why six? That doesn’t make sense.”
Her friend shook her head. “You stop. Trust me. They are doing everything they can to find Michael.”
Julia couldn’t stop thinking, But why so many?
40
My eyes opened. I closed them quickly, the shocking brightness sending a jolt of pain from my forehead to my neck.
“Sir?”
I opened one eye. A woman in a blue uniform looked down at me. Her hair smelled just slightly of mothballs. When I blinked, I noticed the phone still clutched in my hand. Julia, I thought, remembering the voice perfectly, like I could actually hear it repeating over and over again inside my skull.
“Sir?”
I looked up at the woman again. She stared down at me, waiting. When I finally answered, it came out more like a croak. “Yes?”
“You have to exit the bus,” she said.
That’s when I noticed all the other passengers were gone. I must have fallen asleep the second I sat down because I remembered nothing of the drive. Honestly, for those first few seconds after the woman woke me up, I didn’t remember anything but the phone ringing. Not the explosion. Not the man in the lobby. Not the bus ride. The strangest part was that I didn’t even remember that I’d forgotten everything. It just didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t seem to matter.
I exited the bus carrying the phone and my case. Outside, the first thing I noticed was the humidity. The air clung to my face like a wet, hot hand. Instantly, I had a hard time catching my breath. I took a few steps and found a bench by the sidewalk. I sat, heavily, and knew already that something wasn’t right.
That’s when I noticed the outlets. I saw signs for Nautica and Ralph Lauren. I stood back up and moved a few feet away from the station. There were stores for Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.
Understand, I still felt confused. But even I knew this could not be Philadelphia. In a way, I didn’t even truly understand what I saw. But somehow I’d expected tall buildings, city streets. And what I saw didn’t match up.
As I took a deep breath, I swear I could smell the ocean.
“What?” I said.
Someone passing by paused. It was a woman, dressed in a short skirt and flip-flops that looked like plastic flowers. She stared at me through oversized sunglasses.
“Are you okay?”
I took a step away from her. And the world started to spin. I staggered back again and then doubled over.
“Oh, God,” the woman said.
The corners of my vision turned dark. I think I sat down on the pavement. Then I heard her calling for help. The next thing I can remember was sitting back in the station. A Greyhound employee leaned over in front of me.
“You drunk?”
“What?”
“I’m asking if you’re drunk?”
“Stop,” I heard the woman say.
She stood beside the man, her sunglasses off. Thick bangs of hair covered one of her large brown eyes. The rest was braided into pigtails.
“Something’s wrong,” the man said, clearly suspicious.
“Where am I?” I asked.
He snorted. “At the bus station.”
“In Philadelphia?”
“What?”
“Am I in Philadelphia?”
The man laughed outright at this. “No, you’re in Atlantic City.”
“Are you trying to get to Philadelphia?” the woman asked, her kind words a stark contrast to the man’s.
“I thought I did.” My eyes stayed on the man. “Someone is waiting for me.”
“Your wife?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The woman’s eyes might have watered. She moved closer, sort of pushing the man away.
“We’ll get you there.”
She took my hand and led me to a ticket window.
“He needs to get to Philadelphia.”
“Fifteen dollars.”
The woman reached down to the frayed bag she wore on her shoulder. I put my hand out.
“No, it’s okay. I’m okay.”
I pulled out my money clip. My fingertip touched the credit card and I paused, looking at the woman out of the corner of my eye. I tapped the edge of the plastic, lightly. Then I slipped a twenty out instead. Maybe some of my memories were returning. Maybe, like a fog melting away from a mirror, I couldn’t see the truth yet, but a shadow had come back. I really don’t know. It was just that something told me to pay in cash.
“When does the bus leave?” the woman asked.
“Five minutes.”
I turned to her and looked the woman dead in the eye.
“Thank you so much,” I said. I think I teared up a bit, but I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe it was her kindness.
She definitely cried. As I watched her walk away, my heart yearned. Not for her, though. I slipped my phone out and hit the home button. The screen was empty, but when I closed my eyes, I saw her name. Julia, I yearned for Julia.
41
The police called not long after Julia returned home. She stood in her kitchen between Evelyn and her mother, who had fixed her a glass of white wine. Julia hadn’t touched it yet. She had been looking out the window watching the kids, hers and half the neighborhood’s, play in the backyard again. The sight felt so different from the day before.
The call startled her, even though she had been on the edge of her seat waiting for it since she stepped in the house. Julia grabbed her phone off the quartz counter and looked at the screen. She did not recognize the extension on her caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Swann? This is Agent Longacre. I’m just calling to follow up on your contact with the New Jersey State Police. How are you, ma’am?”
Her stomach dropped. For some reason, she felt utterly off balance. So she said nothing. Seconds passed in silence before the officer, or whoever it was, finally spoke again.
“Ma’am, are you there?”
Everyone around her kitchen counter stared. She felt a cold sweat touch the skin on her forearms. When she spun and walked away, Julia accidently bumped her mother. She didn’t slow, though, until she was halfway up the stairs.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Julia shut herself in her bedroom. Her back leaned against the closed door, and her chest felt like someone large was standing on it.
“Are you okay?” the man asked.
“Have you found him?”
The man cleared his throat, softly. “We are doing everything we can, I promise you that, Mrs. Swann. I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
The air poured out before she realized she had been holding her breath. “Of course. Sure.”
“Your husband is Michael Swann, correct?”
Her brow furrowed. “Uh, yes.”
“And he was at Penn Station at the time of the explosion?”
“I don’t . . .”
“Please, ma’am, just bear with me for a moment.” He repeated his previous question and waited for an answer.
“Yes, but—”
“Have you heard from Michael Swann directly?”
“No, but he used his credit card.”
“Has he called or texted your cell phone?”
Her hand started to shake. “No. But I called him. I can’t get through. Once I might have, but . . . Please, why are you . . . ?”
“Have any strangers been to your house in the past few months? Men or women that you didn’t know?”
“No,” she snapped.
“Has he traveled out of the country recently?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Does he have any known association to religious extremists?”
“Stop!”
The man paused. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Swann. Understand that hundreds of people have died. Our first priority is to help survivors, but our second is to prevent anything like this from happening again. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“I’m sorry about that. Let me give you my number. Please call me back if you hear from your husband.”
Speaking very slowly, the agent gave his full name and phone number. Julia did not write it down. Instead, she stared at nothing while the entire weight of her body pressed against her bedroom door.
Religious extremists?
42
A few of her friends huddled around the television set. Julia stood at the edge of the family room, looking at the screen. It showed a close-up of a smoldering debris pile while a report talked about the challenges rescue workers faced in trying to find survivors.
“Multiple gas lines are thought to be ruptured, though the city acted quickly in shutting off service to the area. We are being told that some of the areas where power has been recently restored may have additional outages in the coming hours as heavy machinery begins the process of clearing debris below the main stairwell down to the station.”
After that, the reporter moved among pedestrians, asking them questions about their memory of the blast and its continued aftermath. Julia watched until, in the background, she saw a flash of blue that looked exactly the same shade as one of her flyers. For some reason, that was too much. She moved back to the kitchen and picked up her wine. The phone call haunted her, but she told no one at first.
Evelyn was there talking softly to Julia’s mother. Two other women, more acquaintances than meaningful friends, spoke loudly by the sink, each holding a glass of wine in their right hand.
“They’re saying that it’s not the Muslims,” one woman said.
“I doubt that,” the other answered.
“No, seriously. I mean, if it was and they knew it, the president would be bombing someone already.”
“Thank God she didn’t win.”
“Yeah, then maybe we’d go over there and hug someone.”
They laughed. Julia felt sick to her stomach. It had nothing to do with what the ladies said. She barely even heard them. And she had no idea what she would be saying if Michael were someone else’s husband. But he wasn’t. He was hers. He was Evan’s and Thomas’s dad. In a weird way, she wished she could have opinions like that, ones that floated away on the air that birthed them, having no more of an effect than a soft breeze. Instead, her mind stormed with so many thoughts that they failed to form with any true meaning. It felt like some ravenous tiger was stalking her. It was so close she could feel it, but it might as well have been invisible because no one else seemed to know it was there.
“You okay?” Evelyn asked.
Julia nodded. And then shook her head. She started to cry again.
“The police . . . God, I can’t believe this.” She covered her eyes for a second, then pressed in on her temples. “This just can’t be happening.”
“He’ll get home,” her mother said. “I promise.”
Julia nodded, but her mother’s words seemed to hold little weight. How could she promise? She knew less than Julia did.
“Have you talked to Michael’s parents?”
Julia shook her head, feeling even more overwhelmed. They lived in Florida. And they had no idea Michael had been in New York the day before. Evelyn smiled and handed her the glass of wine. She finished most of it in one swallow.
It was in that instant, just as she lowered her glass to the counter, that everything changed. The first thing she noticed was the phone. It rang in her front pocket. At the same time, she heard the intake of a half dozen breaths at once. Someone whispered, “Oh, God,” or “Oh, Julia.” She couldn’t tell which.
There was an instant that occurred, one that would stick with Julia forever. Over the years, she would go back to it, wish it back into existence. If she ever could, she would hold on to it forever. She would live in that instant, never moving past it. It would be her own Groundhog Day.
In it, her hand held the phone. Her brain, a second behind reality, truly expected it to be a call from the police officers in Philadelphia, telling her that they had found Michael, confused but okay. She would nurse her husband back to a full recovery. She knew that this would still change their lives forever. They would never be the same. But in that instant, she saw some good in it.
Then that moment, that unbelievable nirvana, passed. Her eyes focused on the television screen before she had time to answer the call. That is where she saw his name in white, written across a large blood-red banner.
MICHAEL SWANN, the banner read. She stared at it, like it might be some surreal and unexplainable piece of pop art. Then six faces turned to look at her. Six pale circles, like full moons. And like full moons, they changed her. She became the beast reflected in those eyes. She knew it, somehow, before she could even understand it.
For the banner said more than her husband’s name. It read:
MICHAEL SWANN SUSPECT IN PENN STATION ATTACK.
PART
TWO
BEING HOME
When Thomas was an infant and Evan a toddler, Michael traveled for work every week. Just before Evan was born, he had taken a job with a medical device company doing sales. And Julia had regretfully yet excitedly submitted her resignation to the governor to be a stay-at-home mom. They moved into a new and bucolic neighborhood, Glen Brook Acres. After their second son was born, she had walked the hilly streets of her neighborhood twice a day, like clockwork, the baby in the stroller and Evan doing his best to push it. Once in the morning by themselves. The second time at 2:00 P.M. with four of the other moms in the neighborhood.
“I don’t know how you do it with your husband traveling as much as he does,” a friend said one day as they crested Barberry Road and turned onto Glen Meadow Drive.
Julia laughed it off. “Sometimes it’s easier.”
The other moms laughed and chimed in with their own stories. They all matched, thematically. Even the well-meaning husbands got lumped into a single diffuse category of buffoonery.
“Oh, my God,” a mom said. “Last week, I went to Darcie’s Cabi party and I left Bobby at home with Jilly and Caiden. I told him to get them into bed by eight. When I got home, it was almost eleven, he was sitting on the floor in the family room trying to teach them both to catch a little football. I mean, Cai isn’t even a year old yet.”
“Did they sleep in the next morning?”
“Of course not. They were a mess. No nap, either. It took me two days to get them back on track.”
A mom looked at Julia. “Speaking of napping, how are yours doing?”
“Still a battle. Evan just wants to stay awake so he can hang out with me. I think he’s adjusting to being a big brother.”
The mom shook her head. “It’ll get there. I remember when I had my second. I used Dr. Jenson’s method to regulate their sleeping time. Worked like a charm. You should try it.”
Julia nodded. “Maybe I will.”
“I just bought flash cards from him,” another mom, the group’s organizer, said. “Jilly’s already reading all her sight words.”
The conversation turned to early-childhood enrichment. Julia smiled. She turned slightly to see the newest member of the group. The mother had moved in earlier that year but had come out for the first time. Julia didn’t know it yet, but her name was Evelyn and she would become her best friend in the neighborhood.
“Does your husband travel?” Evelyn asked her as a side conversation to the rest of the group.
“He does,” Julia said.
“Is it hard?”
“Kind of. But you find a rhythm. How about yours?”
“No. He’s an accountant, though, so I don’t see him much from January through April. He pretty much eats, sleeps, adds, and subtracts.”
Julia laughed. It felt odd, new in a way. Like it might have been the first adult laugh she’d had since having children. Feeling strangely happy, she introduced herself. They spoke for a moment more before being assimilated into the group. After the walk, they stopped outside one of the other moms’ houses.
“I’ll add you to the text chain, Evelyn. I’m so happy you came out,” the mother said.
“Thanks for inviting me,” Evelyn said.
They broke up, heading their separate ways back home. Julia glanced over her shoulder once and watched the newcomer head up into one of the cul-de-sacs. The emotion she felt made her uncomfortable. It was creepy, in a way, like she might follow this relative stranger home. At the same time, some connections formed just that quickly. It was like those moments in life that seem ordained. Not surprisingly, Julia likened it to the day she met Michael.
* * *
—
Later that night, Julia got a text. She sat on one of their new counter stools. Evan had been secured in a booster seat, and Thomas sat buckled into his car seat, which rested atop the kitchen table. She cut up boiled carrots and baked chicken breast into perfect little choke-proof cubes. She put the plate and a stubby, blunt fork with a green rubber handle on Evan’s tray.
“You do,” Evan said.
“Not tonight.”
Evan’s lower lip popped out like he’d been stung by a bee.
“Ev, you’re a big boy now. You can do it.”
A single, comically large tear ejected from his left eye. Julia shook her head and picked up the fork. While feeding her four-year-old, she read the text. It was her walking chain. Their leader had decided to cancel the next day’s meet-up due to a nor’easter heading their way. Her phone lit up as other moms replied, acknowledging the cancellation and thanking the head mom for organizing everything. She stopped on a response from a number not in her contacts.
The Real Michael Swann Page 15